Photo Mechanic
Photo Mechanic is photo workflow software designed for professional photographers. It specializes in providing fast browsing and culling of digital images, with advanced metadata tools and support for tethered shooting.
photo
workflow
metadata
tethered-shooting
Photo Mechanic: Fast Photo Workflow
Professional-grade photo workflow software for fast image browsing, culling, and management with advanced metadata tools and tethered shooting support.
What is Photo Mechanic?
Photo Mechanic is a software application designed specifically for professional photographers to enhance and accelerate their digital workflow. First released in 2001 by Camera Bits, Inc., Photo Mechanic aims to provide a fast, flexible, and powerful browsing, culling, and metadata tool for working with digital image files.
Some key features of Photo Mechanic include:
- Very fast rendering and browsing of RAW, JPEG, and video files
- Powerful culling tools like star ratings, color labels, and filtering to quickly select the best images
- Advanced EXIF, IPTC, and XMP metadata editing tools
- Support for tethered shooting with instant display and metadata sync
- Sidecar XMP support for non-destructive metadata edits
- Integrates with major digital asset managers like Adobe Lightroom
- API and plugins allow automation and custom workflows
- Available for Mac and Windows
If you deal with thousands of images from a shoot, Photo Mechanic aims to provide the speed, culling power, and metadata tools to facilitate your post-processing workflow. The emphasis is on keeping the software responsive when working with many large image files at once. For more selective editing of images, most users would switch to Lightroom or other photo editing programs after initial culling in Photo Mechanic.
Photo Mechanic Features
Features
- Fast browsing and culling of photos
- Advanced metadata editing and IPTC support
- Support for tethered shooting
- Facial recognition and tagging
- Geotagging
- Color labels and star ratings
- Batch editing
- Customizable interface
- Plug-in support
Pricing
- One-time Purchase
Pros
Very fast at rendering and culling large photo libraries
Powerful metadata tools
Good tethered shooting support
Can integrate with Lightroom and Photoshop workflows
Cons
No non-destructive editing
Limited to photo browsing, culling and metadata
No built-in raw processing
Expensive compared to some alternatives
The Best Photo Mechanic Alternatives
Top Photos & Graphics and Photo Editing and other similar apps like Photo Mechanic
Here are some alternatives to Photo Mechanic:
Suggest an alternative ❐
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is a photo editing and digital asset management software that allows photographers to import, organize, edit, and share their photos more efficiently.Some key features of Lightroom include:Importing and organizing a large number of photosApplying batch edits to multiple photos at onceAdvanced editing tools like radial and gradient filtersFacial...
FastStone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer is a powerful yet easy-to-use image viewing and managing software. It's an excellent alternative to the default image viewers that come with Windows operating systems.Some key features of FastStone Image Viewer include:Support for a wide range of image formats including JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP as well...
IrfanView
IrfanView is a fast, compact yet powerful graphic viewer program for Microsoft Windows. It was first released in 1996 and has become one of the most popular image viewers worldwide with over 1 million downloads per month.Some key features of IrfanView include:Supports a wide variety of image formats including JPEG,...
PhotoPrism
PhotoPrism is a modern, privacy-focused photo management software that allows users to organize and manage their personal photo collections. It is designed to be self-hosted, meaning users can install and run it on their own servers, giving them control over their data and ensuring privacy. Key Features: Self-Hosted Solution: PhotoPrism...
Darktable
darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable, and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.Some key features of darktable include:Supports RAW files from over 400 different camerasPowerful processing...
DigiKam
digiKam is a free and open source digital photo management software. It allows importing and organizing photos and other images, viewing and sorting them, editing images (crop, resize, exposure, color adjustments, etc.), geotagging photos, sharing them, and more.Some key features of digiKam:Import photos from cameras, mobile devices, folders, and moreOrganize...
Photoscape
Photoscape is a free image editing application for Windows. It provides a range of features that allow users to view, edit, enhance, organize, print, share and even create animated gif images and slideshows.Some of the key features of Photoscape include:Image Viewer - View photos in full screen, thumbnail view, adjust...
XnView
XnView is a versatile and powerful image viewer, converter and editor for Windows. First released in 1998, it supports over 500 different image formats including common ones like JPG, PNG, GIF as well as raw formats from major camera brands.Despite its longevity, XnView remains lightweight and easy to use. The...
XnView MP
XnView MP is a versatile and powerful photo viewer, image manager, image converter and more for Windows. It is free for private and non-commercial use.XnView MP supports over 500 different image formats, including RAW files from various digital cameras. It offers extensive metadata support, displaying and allowing editing of EXIF,...
Nomacs
nomacs is a powerful yet lightweight image viewer, converter and editor. It is open source software available for Windows, Linux and macOS.Some of the key features of nomacs include:Supports a wide variety of image formats including JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, RAW and moreAllows viewing images in fullscreen modeBasic image editing...
IMATCH
IMATCH is an open-source 3D CAD model search engine developed by researchers at Texas A&M; University. It enables efficient geometry-based searches across large databases of 3D CAD models. IMATCH has innovative shape-based search algorithms that find models based on similarities in geometric characteristics.Key features of IMATCH include:Geometry-based search - Finds...
FilterPixel
FilterPixel is a user-friendly photo editing application designed specifically for applying filters and graphical effects to images. It provides an extensive library of filters, textures, light effects and other tools to enhance photos.Some key features of FilterPixel include:Hundreds of filters categorized by type - vintage, black & white, color tone,...
ApolloOne
ApolloOne is a cloud-based project management application built to help small teams plan, organize, and deliver projects more efficiently. With an easy-to-use interface, ApolloOne makes it simple to setup projects, create tasks, assign due dates, track progress, and facilitate collaboration across your team.Key features include:Interactive dashboards to visualize tasks, deadlines,...
Pixave
Pixave is a photo management and editing software for Windows. It provides a complete solution to organize, edit, and share your photos.Key features of Pixave:Intuitive interface to view, browse and manage your photo collectionTools to add tags, ratings and colors to categorize photosBasic editing features like crop, resize, rotation, exposure,...
Aftershoot
Aftershoot is a free and open-source screenshot tool designed specifically for the Linux operating system. It aims to provide an intuitive and streamlined way for Linux users to capture, annotate, edit, save, and share screenshots.Some of the key capabilities and features of Aftershoot include:Customizable annotation tools - Aftershoot allows you...
JPEGView
JPEGView is a free image viewer and editor utility for Windows that specializes in working with JPEG images. It offers a range of useful tools for viewing, resizing, cropping and converting JPEG images.When you open a JPEG file in JPEGView, it loads very quickly and renders high-resolution images smoothly. You...
